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................................................................................................................................................................................
 I recently read about a way to swap people in different pictures from this blog.
If I had more time on my hands, I would have used that tutorial
to create a picture of me and my babies. For Mother's Day, I
asked Mr. BAW to take a picture of me and the kids, including Toby, of
course. I knew it was going to be a big undertaking so I told Mr.
BAW to just keep snapping away.
So of the 12
pictures Mr. BAW took, we got one good picture below. Toby was
surprisingly consistent in all the pictures. The worst offender
was the toddler! He squirmed, whined, and kept moving his hands.
You can see that I tried to restrain his hands in a few pictures
to the left. But in the end, I got my Mother's Day picture
without having to do manual head swapping. :-)
Baby girl
is almost two months old now and she's accomplished quite a bit.
She can now lift her head up, laugh, and coo. Her latest
thing is to say "Ah-goo!" to Mr. BAW whenever he holds her. So
he's been calling her affectionately as Ahgoo. I've also decided
to nickname my toddler Buzz since he's obsessed with Buzz Lightyear.
I will use their nicknames Buzz and Ahgoo when I talk about my
kids on this blog! |
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Posted May 25, 2012
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| Folks like us who live on the West Coast were lucky enough to witness the annular solar eclipse
on Sunday. Although we didn't get to see the perfect eclipse
where the moon's shadow passes right through the center of the Sun's
disc in the sky, forming a bright ring, it was still a pretty
spectacular event to experience. Many people took to Griffith
Observatory to observe the Sun, some bought fancy glasses and
contraptions to view the eclipse. We chose to view the eclipse
using very basic tools, taking advantage of simple optical principles.
I used a hole puncher to punch a small hole in a piece of
cardboard I pulled out of our recycle bin. Light from the Sun
passes through the pin hole which acts like a lense and creates and inverted image
of the object. In this case, we get a shadow of the solar eclipse
as it is happening. Oh, and you can create a similar image (not
as sharp obviously) just by making little holes with your hands.
Yeah, our way of viewing the eclipse is not as nice as some of photos
you'll see here, but it's also more fun and you get to learn some physics. :-) |
Can you see the shadow of the solar eclipse? Kinda looks like a cresent moon. |
My low-tech eclipse viewer. |
An even lower-tech tool, my hands. It creates multiple eclipses. |
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Posted May 22, 2012
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Aren't
these socks adorable? Yes, it is a rhinestone you're seeing on
the socks! They were gifts from my friend TNK. Our
two-year-old called them shoes when he saw them on his sister. I
corrected him and told him that they are socks. He was not happy
and insisted that they are shoes. :-)
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Posted May 14, 2012
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Happy
Mother's Day to my two favorite mothers and to all the moms out there,
including the animal moms. A week ago, a mama bear was spotted
with her two cubs in the backyard of an Altadena home. The news coverage
followed them all afernoon. The bears were so adorable, the cubs
tried their hardest to follow mama over a fence. Thankfully, the
authorities respected the bears and eventually mama bear took her
babies back into the local mountain safely. This
is also my first Mother's Day as a mom of two! So far things have
been good. I'm learning how to juggle between the needs of
everyone in our family, including Toby's. But the real test will
be when I go back to work full time. I'm already very nervous it,
even though I have a few more months of maternity leave. For now,
I'll just try to enjoy my last newborn experience! |
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Posted May 11, 2012
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Ten
years ago, a litter of Golden Retriever puppies was born in Riverside,
California. Two months later, one of the puppies came home with
me and I named him Toby. I've never written down the story of Toby so I
thought I'd briefly document here, on Toby's 10th birthday.
Ten
years ago, I was single, working full time, and finishing up my
doctorate at UCLA. I had moved out of a shared apartment near
UCLA into a one-bedroom apartment. It was the first time I lived
alone. I had actually gotten myself onto a waitlist for a
pet-friendly apartment in anticipation of getting a dog.
Dog-friendly apartments are actually pretty hard to come-by in
LA. After months of waiting, an apartment in Brentwood finally
became available so I grabbed it.
Soon after, I searched
the internet looking for Golden Retriever puppies to adopt. It
has always been a dream of mine to have a Golden Retriever, my favorite
dog breed. In my mind, I wanted a ball of fur, just a beautitul
bundle of golden puff ball that I can cuddle and kiss! I
found two breeders with litters ready for adoption.
However, one breeder was in Riverside, the other in Palmdale.
If you take a look at Google Maps, you'll see that there is a
mountain chain between the two cities. The breeder in Palmdale
had great pictures of her puppies posted on the internet, the puppies
were adorable!! They were the puff balls I've always pictured.
The Riverside breeder did not post any pictures of the puppies,
in fact, he only had one puppy left! So I called both places to
schedule appointments to see the puppies. Unfortunately, the
Palmdale breeder couldn't see me until late afternoon the Friday I
wanted to book. So I decided that I would go see the one puppy in
Riverside first that day. Since I was going to drive a long way
to some stranger's house I didn't want to go alone. Well, who
would have time to go with me on a weekday besides my best grad school
buddy?! I managed to convince him to tag along even though he's a
cat guy, clue number one.
After two hours of driving, we
arrived at the breeder's house in Riverside. It was an old house
with a large yard. It was July so the temperature was in the high
80's! I parked right in front of the house and as we walked up to
the fence, two huge Golden Retrievers ran up to the gate from the
backyard. They actually startled me for a second because I didn't
expect Golden Retrievers to be so big. "Those must be the parents
of the litter." I thought to myself. When we went into the
house, the breeder said to us, "Let me go get the little monster."
I thought that was odd to because I was expecting a little puppy
to run out excitedly if they hear someone new in the house. I
looked past the living room and saw the puppy still fast asleep on the
floor in the kitchen, clue number two. A minute later, after the
breeder woke him up, the puppy walked into the living room, still
groggy from his nap. I took one look at him and was actually
disappointed because this puppy was big. He was not the puff ball
I was hoping to get. He was more like other puppies would be by
three or four months old, but he was only two months old. So I
told the breeder that he should give me a discount for the puppy
because he's already so big. The breeder was asking for $500, I
was hoping he'd knock off fifty to a hundred dollars. But he
refused, telling me that there is another person coming to see the
puppy that afternoon. Since I also have another breeder to see, I
didn't want to forgo my dream of having a fluff ball puppy. So we
left without the puppy.
We got back into my car and I
started driving off. I asked my friend if he was willing to drive
all the way to Palmdale with me to see the other litter, expecting him
to say yes. Then he did something which completely surprised me.
He got angry and said to me, "Why would you want to drive all the
across LA to see another puppy when there's a perfectly good puppy
here. Besides, he licked my toe!" I've never seen my very
passive friend so passionate about anything before so I was completely
caught off guard. Then, as if my friend had turned a light bulb
on in my head, I decided that I had to have that puppy! "He
licked your toe?? Why didn't you tell me that earlier?!" I
yelled at my friend, as if it was his fault that I left without the
puppy. I quickly pulled over to the side of the road (we had only
driven about a few blocks away) and frantically called the breeder to
tell him that we were coming back to pick up the puppy. A few
minutes later, I had the puppy in the back seat, along with a few day's
worth of dog food. I was a little worried about the puppy being
in the back seat by himself but my friend refused to sit with him in
the back. But turns out that I didn't have anything to worry
about because the puppy slept all the way to my apartment, clue number
three!
When we got back to my apartment, we excitedly brought
the puppy in expecting to play with him all afternoon. Instead,
the puppy instinctively lay down on a towel I had put down for him in
the living room and continued with his nap. "Wow, your puppy
is boring!" said my friend. Yeah, the same guy who convinced me
to get the puppy in the previous paragraph! But I slowly
discovered, through the years, that this laid back, nap-loving,
bear-of-a-dog is the sweetest family dog a family can ever ask for.
Turns out that my cat-loving friend had helped me pick out a cat
trapped in a giant dog's body. This would explain Toby's love of
sleep, fear of water, and disinterest in ball fetching.
So
that is the story of how Toby became my first baby and has been with me
as I grow my family in the past 10 years! Now Toby's life is
filled with babies and surrounded by toys he can't play with. But
he seems to adjust to his new life very well. Below are a couple
of pictures of Toby and the babies (the little girl in the second
picture is the daughter of our friend.) Happy 10th birthday Toby,
we love you so much!
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Posted May 8, 2012
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Photo curtesy of Carlos Gotay Martinez/FlickrMay 5th is a special day in more ways than one. Besides being Cinco De Mayo, this year we'll get to see the super full moon,
the closest moon approach to Earth. If you live on the west
coast, the moon will be full at around 8:35pm. Maybe we'll take a
walk along the beach to view this full moon! May 5th is also
special to me because it's the day I defended my PhD thesis back in
2003! Wow, I can't believe that it was almost 10 years ago.
You know what else happened 10 years ago? I'll tell you in
the next post. :-) |
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Posted May 5, 2012
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Our
little girl celebrated her Full Moon last weekend. In Chinese culture,
baby's 1st month of life is very significant and is usually celebrated
with a banquet. We decided not to do so but we still had a few
nice visits from friends and family to mark the occasion. One
special visit was from my friend TNK from San Francisco. She is
my close friend and knows that I am raising my children to be bilingual,
English and Chinese. So she gave us this set of Chinese wooden
blocks! How in the world did she ever thought of this or find it?
I would never have thought to even look for Chinese blocks!
We already have a set of wooden blocks by Uncle Goose, thanks to
one of my little cousins. But now, we have a Chinese set.
What a great way to learn some common Chinese characters, one
side of the block has character strokes to teach you the proper way to
write a character. Even Mr. BAW can learn a word or two from the
blocks! :-) Thank you TNK for such a thoughtful gift. As
for Baby Girl, she's doing great. Looking back at over two years
ago when we were 1st time parents to a one-month-old, it's like day and
night. Baby Girl is so much more mellow than her older brother
was at this age. She is feeding regularly, sleeping extremely
well, and is just a happy baby. She nurses about every 3 hours at
night so I get several good stretches of sleep. Unlike her
brother, she is not lactose intolerant and only occasionally gets
gassy. But even then, she gets over it pretty quickly. I'm
keeping my fingers crossed that this good behavior will continue.
Happy Baby Moon to our precious little dragon girl. |
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Posted May 2, 2012
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